The Unleashing REVISED!
by NeonZangetsu
Summary: Love knows no bounds. It transcends time, space, even entire worlds. This is a story of love. A great and terrible love that will tear two worlds apart. It is absolutely the worse kind of love. It is the Unleashing. NarutoxHinata! Fluff! Star Wars X-over


**A/N: My first ever! NarutoxStar Wars crossover! Pairing is NaruxHina, but I will let you guess what's happened thus far. Is his beloved dead? or isn't she? And how, oh how, did they get to the Star Warsverse in the first place? No worries! There will be flashbacks aplenty, think of this as a teaser of what will happen in the future! Oh, and this is a crossover of both worlds, not just a simple insertion of characters, for all those Star Wars fans out there. I promise not to dissapoint and will strive to remain faithful to the series as best I can! (Tips and pointers would be much appreciated however)I have decided to resubmit the story in the Naruto section, just as a heads up, and I have changed a few things, as I was not satisfied with the version I submitted.**

_There is nothing either good or bad, __but thinking makes it so._

_~William Shakespeare_

**_The Unleashing (Revised!)_**

Alarms vied with the sound of starfighter engines and explosions for dominance, creating a dissonant racket all around him. He gloried in it. Reveled in the chaos and the death and the destruction and the ruination that surrounded him. The dead bodies of the jedi had already been cleared from his office, disposed of in proper and fitting fashion for their pitiful ways.

All that remained was to await Lord Vader's report.

He could feel it, that rippling in the atmosphere. That subtle reverberation, rising from deep within the soles of his feet. The distorting of space, as heaven and earth became one; joining, splintering, as the atmosphere rent itself asunder and inexplicably stymied itself shut behind the anomaly. He dabbed a hand across the screen, his touch triggering some flicker of unseen mechanism, and opened the path for the return of his long awaited guest.

He permitted himself a small smile even, wiping away a stray drop of blood from his cheek; the stray droplet of moisture doing little to demean that charming smile that had sent so many Jedi to their unwitting demise. Calmly, he touched a hand to the hilt that lay in his lap, knowingly; knowing at long last, the curtain could be raised for the final act. His apprentice could not, _would not_ fail him, not now, when he was steeped in the ways of the dark side.

Now, it was time for the finale.

"Welcome." he whispered softly as the harsh light through the viewport inexplicably dimmed, darkening despite the electic hustle and bustle of Coruscant below. It was twilight; a fitting irony for the rise and reveng of the sith. Long had he awaited this moment. Long had he plotted and planned for it; the climax of a scheme that had been all but centuries in the making, waiting for the right opportunity, no, the perfect opportunity.

_It was the perfect time to strike. Here and now. To execute Order Sixty-Six. _

To tear asunder the balance of the jedi order and all that those insolent fools who followed its creed dared deny. To bring low the Galatic Republic and institute what would one day be known as the fearsome regime of the Empire. He cared not if the sky was wrenched apart; cleaved, or sundered entirely. Let his apprentice have his way with the fools who thought they could impede his progess. This, was the moment he had been waiting for. Paplpatine, that sinister man with the ever indefatigable smile, frowned. Whatever lurked beyond that blackened abyss was now making its way toward him with all due haste, something with which his apprentice would not entangle himself lightly.

Suddenly, a notion occured to him.

Why, you ask?

Because _he_ was absolutely furious.

The intensity of his stare gave Darth Sidious pause. _Strange._ Lord Vader had yet to return. Too late, he realized his mistake. Too late, he realized that this youth was not the man who had once been Anakin Skywalker, nor was he Darth Vader. This man was not his apprentice. Too late, he discovered a strangle sparkling of gold beneath the cowl that had hidden the man's face. He retreated from him as if half asleep. _No._ It was not possible. It could not be possible. But the force did not lie. Approaching him now, alive, despite the massacre of the Jedi Temple, was a je-

**_Ka-runch!_**

He whirled, a startled hiss flying from his lips as an invisible force crushed the hologram projector before him and reduced it to a smoldering hear of scrap metal. Just like that, his contact with the Clone Army had been severed. Temporarily of course, and not irrevocably, but the slight delay in his plans

_Not possible!_

With a viscious snap-hiss the lightsaber in his hand ignited, casting its ruby red pallor across the walls and high ceiling of his office. The intruder paused, tilting his head to the side for a fraction of a second, the ruby red gleam playing across his face for the briefest of instants. Sapphiric blue eyes sparkled in the darkness, twinkling mysteriously as it faded; exposing a whiskered face that was as handsome as it was deadly.

"Greetings." He spoke with subtle malice. "Sith lord."

Arms upraised, clad in a black cloak that devoured the sun's early light, he seemed more a god than a mortal. He peered down from the height, surveying all the carnage with a disgust that did not feel feigned. Without a word, he marched forth from the doorway; the great black abyss snapping shut behind him as he forsook the relative safety that the minute possibility of retreat might have offered him.

"And you are?" Palpatine couldn't help but inquire. He knew without asking. This boy, this...trespasser, was strong in the force. Were it not for the many hilts that dangled at his belt, he would have thought that it was one of his many ill-fated apprentices of many years past, come to claim his life. But that wasn't possible. He would have certainly recalled taking such a charismatic youth under his darkened wing.

Wouldn't he?

_"I?"_ The intruder blinked but once, his voice tumbling to a significantly lower pitch as he did so. "I've gone by many names, in the past. Demon-brat, liar, traitor, usurper, lover, murderer, friend, brother, and a hero, to name a few. But you," And here he did smile, "You, who whould plot behind the scenes to cause such wanton discord and seek nothing but for want of your own personal gain, you may call me...

Two of the hilts jumped from his belt and into awaiting hands.

_**...your death!"**_

Twin explosions echoed in the twilight, and sudden, twin bars of burning orange-gold blazed within his hands. Not quite the red sabre of sith lore, but then again, neither were they the traditional blue-green of jedi philosophy. He kept his lightsaber carefully between them; lest those hypnotically spinning blades lop off his head. The intruder_-he had yet to offer a name of any sort-_grinned a predatory grin and came flying forward.

Palpatine barely raised his blade in time to avoid decapitation.

Gold met Scarlet. Sparks splayed furiously about the room that had once belonged to the supreme chancellor. The difference in strength was overwhelming. It was like trying to wrestle a rancor, barehanded. Such was the immense gap of power between the already weary Darth Sidious, and this fresh-faced challenger that had_-for reasons as of yet unexplained-_come to kill him.

"Palpatine, I presume?" The man inquired genially. He twirled the sabre in his hand, the electric blade glowing an impossible orange, bluring strange hues of sapphire and gold as he came near. He had eyes only for his enemy. The man who'd brought all this misfortune and travesty upon the world, and laid it squarely on his shoulders. _Him._ The one who'd forced him to do this; to become something that was dressed in death and damnation, something that was as much man as it was machine; a cold blooded killer..

_Damn but he was fast._

The first strike of his blade knocked Palpatine back, unbalancing him. He crashed into his desk and barely evaded a second blow as he brought his lightsaber to bear and raked it in a vicious arc through the air where the intruder's head had been a nanoklick before. On the backswing, he felt the blade nick its shoulder just before a stiff-armed smash to Palpatines face splintered across his jaw and knocked him over backward.

To his credit, Palpatine recovered well. But not well enough. Even as he rolled, even as he extinguished his blade and brought a hand up, fingers splayed eyes flaring with hate and malice and loathing, the intruder's countermeasure was there to greet him; _and_ the sudden surge of electricity that leapt from his fingertips.

Jagged streaks of lightning jolted outward and met him head on, colliding with the splinters of white-blue that flew from his own fingertips. The intruder leered at him over the lances of light of his that had countered the dark lord's counteroffensive. _Impressive,_ he mused. _Most impressive._ The intruder had been schooled in the art of the darkside, or so it would seem, then, that he also had an opportunity.

The intruder did not give him that opportunity. He continued raining down blows upon Palpatine, besieging with heavy-handed overhanded sweeps, ripostes, lunges, and all other manner of incredulously powerful strikes that seemingly kept the great dark lord on the defensive.

He smiled benignly as the intruder abruptly broke the power struggle; forcing them to collide once more. The boy was powerful, but he was no jedi master. Perhaps not even a knight. His blows were wild, harsh, and distinct. Had he somehow survived Lord Vader's "cleansing" of the jedi temple here on Coruscant? Or was he perhaps a fledgling, come home from the war to find his master slaughtered at the hands of the only recently departed sith apprentice?

Regardless of whether he be a padawan or a knight_-Sidious found the prospect of fighting the former rather amusing-_he could not afford to relinquish his guard against such a fearsome foe. Nay, to do such a thing would certainly guarantee his downfall. That, and all that he had worked for over these many years, would be brought to ruin, should he perish here.

_No._ He reaffirmed, to himself. He could not, he _would not _allow such an offense to come to pass.

Swords clashed, Palpatine deflecting a searching thrust, and the intruder in turn flicking away Palpatine's riposte. Again they clashed together. This time _Palpatine_ gave ground. The intruder took the bait and came raging after him. But he sensed the reluctance within him. Ah, yes, the dark side. No one could touch him while it coursed through his veins. The call was strong. Too strong, perhaps, for his young attacker to resist, for though he answered every stroke of the intruder's blades, it came less and less masterfully each time they came together.

He was beginning to hesistate. For all of his earlier bravado, for all of his rage, he was flagging. Faltering, each step, each parry, bringing him one step closer to defeat. It was almost pitiable really. Without the rage to fuel him, the jedi ceded to logic and reason. As logic and reason took root in his mind, so too, did fear. Where there was fear, there was weakness. Where there was weakness, so too, was there opportunity.

A most splendid opportunity.

"Are you afraid to strike me down?" Sidious let an edge of superiority creep back into his voice as they warred throughout the council chambers. For all his posturing, the boy's hood still remained miracously in place, but when he looked now, Sidious could see the indecision and the doubt gnawing away at his resolve. "Are you afraid of me, jedi?" He pressed, without regard, without remorse. "Are you afraid to die like the rest of your insufferable kin-

_**"SILENCE, MURDERER!"**_

The intruder attacked before he could finish the sentence, a blistering combination of blows that left Palpatine on his back foot. Clearly, he had hit a very deep nerve. So deep, in fact, that he found himself entirely on the defensive for the remainder of their short-lived duel. Lungies and parries were swatted aside with almost casual disinterest, swath after swath of sith lightning found itself drained harmlessly into the ever-whirling blades that howled for his head.

"You never gave them a chance!" The intruder howled at him, his composure gone; thrown to the wind alongside any semblance of self-reliance. "You never gave any of them a chance to live!" His neck arched back just then, his body tensing, as if for a great and terrible blow. And suddenly, he came out swinging.

They fought like the sith lords of old, raging back and forth across the office, uncaring what happened around them. Once again they clashed, the collisions of their blades striking flares from each other and energy discharges-light and dark-arcing from their bodies to creep along the support pillars or bleed away into the floor. Sidious didn't have to feign the strain at allnow; because this time it was genuine.

Whomever he was, the boy was furious.

The intruder took his pain and loss and whatever it was that Palpatines words had stirred in him and made it into power. The atmosphere rippled between them, then the desk itself was uprooted and sent hurtling into Palpatine's back. The sith lord whirled at the last instant, nudging the lethal projectile south before it could inflict bodily harm. But in that instant his opponent flung a hand toward the window, and their world imploded.

Glass flew around them but left them untouched; propelled away from the sith lord and the jedi by sheer force and force of will. The winds howled their fury and indignation at the two of them; these titans who ripped statues and chairs and all manner of items from their housins and flung them at one another. They collided, once, twice, three times before the inevitable finally occurred.

The elder ceded to the younger.

Abruptly, the intruder broke the stalemate with a quick flick of his wrist. Alarmed, Palpatine backed away, lest he lose his hand to the humming scythe of death. He realized all too late that his sudden retreat had been forseen by his adversary. He began to form a force shield around himself, desperately drawing upon his reserves as he felt a massive swelling in the air that surrounded him. He looked up, into the eyes of his killer, understood what was about to happen, and realized he hadn't the time to prepare himself.

The intruder had deactivated both lightsabers, favoring instead to hold both hands, clenched at his sides. His eyes were glazed and white and filled with so much malice, that, for an instant, Sidious was simply astounded. The sentiment didn't last all that long however. With a mighty exhalation, the intruder thrust his hands forward and the universe imploded in on itself.

Palpatine had time for only a small exclamation.

_"Oh."_

Then he was pushed. Palpatine felt the release of something, deep within the boy. Something raw, all encompassing, and utterly, rechidly vile. It felt as if all the hatred and lust and loathing in all the universe had been compressed into a very small ball, compacted beyond measure, then release as one, gigantic flare. Then he felt as though the world moved out from under him, sucking all the air with it. The lightsaber fell from his hand, and suddenly, he was flying. His head snapped forward and the rain boiled around him. The air itself seemed to hurt, he was moving so fast. The intruder receded into the distance with uncanny speed.

How far he'd been pushed, he couldn't tell. It seemed to last forever, but he knew he had to hit the ground sometime. Oh, he hoped it would be soon. This boy was fascinating how incredibly fascinating! Such power! Such raw, undeniable power! If he could turn him, oh but if only he could turn him! He wouldn't need Anakin, regardless of how strong in the force the lad had become over the years.

But landing was going to hurt.

It _did_ hurt.

His back collided with the wall of the adjacent chamber, only after hurtling through several tons of permacrete and durasteel. Dazzed, Palpatine extended a hand. The warm metal hilt of his lightsaber slid into his palm almost immediately, and not a moment too soon; because a blood curdling howl came chasing after the fleeing metal hilt. Seconds later, the wall itself detonated, crumbling before a titanic blast of something that wasn't quite the force, yet, at the same time so lethally venemous and dark, that it could not possibly have come from anywhere other than the dark side.

Or could it?

Before Palpatine could ponder such a possiblity, before he could hope to scramble to his feet, the youth was on him, pressing down on their locked lightsabers, which sizzled just millimeters from their faces. Palpatine strained but couldn't force the golden blades away. In the eyes of his tormentor he saw not cleansing hatred, but regret. His fury was gone. Even at the end, even as he prepared to strike down the long-forgotten enemy of his kind, he still clung to his weak jedi ways.

Sidious blocked the blow, but only just. The intruder pushed, and Sidious stumbled backwards, and the stench of burning flesh drew nearer. Despite this, the dark lord actually had the audacity to smile, grinning a sickly grin and cackling mirthfully. Despite his impending doom, the dark lord of the sith took heart in the fact that someone so violent so vehemently opposed to allowing his existence, actually existed.

"Do it!" Sidious urged. "Strike me down, boy!"

The intruder urged the lightsabers even closer to Palpatine's face. For a moment, it seemed as if he truly would make good on his threat. Then a blast of telekinesis erupted from the dark lord, shattering every viewport in the booth and sending debris flying. A raging wind swepst past them, sucking out the smoke and shrapnel of their duel. Under such intense pressure, the intruder's cowl_-along with one of his lightsbers_-was inadvertantly torn aside by the wind

He was a handsome fellow, if intense. His blond hair was disheveled, his blue eyes intelligent, his features balanced. Whisker marks tripled each cheek, cheeks that had once dimpled with a constantly bright and enthused grin; no matter the situation or mission. Now, he was intense. His face had hardened, his visage freed of the baby fat that had cursed him in his younger years. Chiseled and nigh but expressionless, that face bore a series of angry red lines from left ear to right, drooping down his chin and neck.

_**"!"**_

Shock rippled across his face for a moment, and that moment was all the sith lord needed

Sidious lunged. The intruder saw him coming and swiped with unbeatable strength, sending Palpatine's lightsaber flying aside. Another swipe turned into a force-embued all but literal backhand; one that rippled across the dark lord's jaw and sent him sprawling, but not before the dark lord of the sith attempted one last, final and desperate attack, or, perhaps it could have been an attempt to turn the young jedi.

The universe will never know.

He turned on a foot, and extinguished one of his saber's letting Palpatine's pass between body and arm. Before Palpatine could recover from his lunge, he had flowed forward. He jammed his elbow into the sith lord's face and plucked the lightsaber from him with ease. He returned to his spot, spinning his new weapon with the ease and abandon of a boy idly twirling a stick. Then he cast it aside. It clattered harshly against the broken glass and tattered carpet in pieces, rolling to a halt at the feet of its former master.

For a moment, there was no movement from either side. Only for a moment.

Then the impasse shattered.

Sidious thrust his arms forth, his fingertips crackling with unrestrained power. He could feel the current ebbing and swelling within him, and he poured the full intensity of his power into the unprepared jedi who stood before him. He staggered. The pommels fell from his hand, extinguished. Sidious rejoiced in this, driving jolt after jold of raw power deeper and deeper into the body of the foolish boy who had dared to oppose him.

"Kneel!" He cackled, as the sith lightning drove the jedi down, but not to his knees. "Kneel before me, young jedi, or perish!" Despite the taunt, his victim somehow denied him the pleasure of hearing him cry out. Infuriated, the dark lord pressed the attack, determined to drive the jedi's knees from

The jedi's answer was to hold a hand outward, spasming from the strain, and make a fist. For a moment, there was nothing, and the cruel assault continued. His victory was only moments away. He no longer cared to turn the jedi toward the dark side. For his impudence, for his treachery against the sith and the republic, for the crime of daring to oppose the great Darth Sidious, the boy would _burn in the fires of-_

Then a different force gripped him, one no less powerful than the first, but aimed at him, not anything else. It gripped Sidious cruelly about the throat and lifted him so his feet barely touched the ground. Sidious snarled in defiance and blasted the boy anew with the tendrils of heaven. The force gripped him even more tightly, closing his windpipe. Sidious choked, kicking out and finding no ground at all beneath him now. Forced to cease the assault, his hands pulled at his throat, but there was nothing there to grip, and no way to fight it.

The jedi had found his second wind. For every second that the chancellor flailed, the jedi fought his way back to his feet and back to the strength that was choking he who had nearly brought the Galatic Republic to its knees. Sidious could barely even see him now. Black spots were crowding out his vision as his oxygen-starved optic nerves began to fail and falter.

He simply had no hope of defeating this boy.

He understood but felt no relief when the jedi's terrible grip loosened and he fell painfully to the ground. Cool air rushed into his lungs. He coughed as though retching, feeling pain all along his windpipe. Over the sound of hacking and wheezing, footsteps approached. Sidious hadn't the strength to speak. Three footsteps echoed against the empty office as the last vestiges of the stranglehold flung themselves to the winds.

And then, he was free. Choking, gasping, wheezing for breath. Unable to maintain his assault for lack of oxygen, he rasped out a desperate plea for mercy. Instead, he found his chin turned upward, beckoned by a blade that burned brighter than the sun itself. His vocal cords were red raw. He could not find it anywhere in him to applaud the fury burning in the eyes of jedi, the great and cleansing hatred that would forever seal his fate and make him-

He heard a metallic click and looked up to see what had happened.

The jedi had cast down his lightsaber.

"Your words are wasted on me." The nameless jedi spat the sentence, his own words ripe with condescenion. "You're not even worth killing after all, Paplatine." He turned his back on the dark lord of the sith then, and he smiled; because he had nothing to fear from this man, not anymore. No longer. Looking at him now, this beaten heap of a man, so weak, that he needed others to do his bidding, it was almost laughable.

No, it _was_ laughable.

"Because, in the end, you were defeated by a boy." The jedi pulled up the cowl of his hood, and walked away into the rain. "And that alone, is so shameful to you that I need not take this duel any further than I already have."

He'd made it all of three steps before he felt it; the faintest glimmer in the force, a trickling of warning that somehow managed to reach him despite the cloud that had been hung upon The Force all this time. It was something, a twinge, an inkling, a suspicion, but in the end it wasn't enough.

_Not enough._

Sidious beckoned, and the lightsaber that had flown free in the storm slapped into his palm. He did not wait. Nor did he hesitate. There was no way he could miss. Not at such close range. Not with the boy's back turned, not as he surged forward with the high frequency sword, spearheading the lunge at him as if it had been launched by a powerful bow. There was no way to avoide the blade because its master had moved with the speed of lightning. Despite his words, despite his apparent decision to spare the life of his most hated enemy, the blonde jedi was already turning.

Too slowly.

Much too slowly, apparently stunned at having his mercy discarded. He wasn't going to make it in time. Sidious both saw and recognized the grim realization in the boy's eyes and then_...something else._ Those matchless pools of sapphiric blue froze; turning to ice before the onrushing blade that threatened to claim the young jedi's life. He slowed, to the disbelief of the sith lord, his lips pursing in a terse frown as something changed, deep within the features of his face.

Sidious, for all his knowledge in the arcane arts of the darkside, couldn't place it. He knew only thus:

_Something changed._

Palpatine's blade pierced the point of the intruder's shoulder. There was the burning and searing smell of ozone and flesh as the scarlet sword penetrated tissue and muscle and bone; only to emerge out the other side. The intruder threw back his head and roared, the sound of agony modulating to a darkened glee. He reached up, up with the same arm that was wounded, and clamped his hand over Palpatine's and the hilt of his saber, locking it in place. Any trace of regret or remorse vanished in that instant. It was simply kill or be killed, and the choice had just been made for him.

"To wound _me,"_ he growled, "You must get close enough that _I_ can wound you as well."

And he brought his blade over and down, severing Palpatine's arm.

The howl that escaped Palpatine was a lament for all that he had failed to do, and all that he now knew he would never do. The intruder threw the arm away, the motion also dislodging the sword from his shoulder. He struck again, opening a rent in Palpatines other arm and again splitting the side of the doomed sith lord's thigh. Sidious staggered. The intruder swung from the side, the blow biting deep into Sidious's waist.

"My name," He hissed, the words darkened; edged with malice, barely burbled beneath the silence. "Is Naruto. Not boy. Now, begone, dark lord of the sith!"

The jedi known as Naruto yanked his lightsaber free and the great Darth Sidious sank to his knees. He lifted his remaining arm to ward of the next blow, and the intruder struck it off at the elbow. Armless, he fell to the floor, collapsing in a rapidly enlarging pool of his own blood. The intruder loomed over her for a moment longer, his gaze straying across what had once been the scourge of the galaxy, now, reduced to little more than a withered, broken husk of his former self.

The temptation to finish him was almost too great.

But he resisted.

"I won't kill you." He whispered softly, extinguishing both blades and belting them to his hip. "Because that would be merciful." He cast his gaze up to the rubble soaked roof and peered upward into the clouds as they at long last let loose their bounty. "Now, lie there and rot with all your schemes and all your plans." His boot crackled outward for a final time, colliding with the dark lord's skull and commending him to inky blackness.

Sidious's head lolled to the side, limp, unconcious, but still very much alivee. Lightsaber wounds didn't neccesarily guarantee a bleed out, but what they did promise was much pain and suffering on their victim's part. Whomever coined the phrase that a lightsaber was a "sophisticated weapon for a more noble era" was full of shit. A lightsaber was the same as a sword. Swords killed, just like any old blaster or kunai or jutsu.

He leapt, long and high, his feet clearing scaffold, his body, the tower's roof.

Only then did he allow the pain to overcome him.

Lightning split the sky into a thousand pieces. Thunder boomed. Far below, and all around, the world raged. The rain and wind scoured him clean. He opened his mouth and felt moisture on his tongue for the first time in what felt like a century. After so long in his own personal hell, it tasted like freedom itself. He swallowed, gulping down the water; lapping up that sweet and bitter liquid as a massive wave of grief clapped him across his body and left him deafened.

_Why? _

"I won." He murmurred softly, as the rain washed away the blood from his robes. "I won." He repeated, chanting the words as if they were a mantra as if they might somehow give him some much needed strength, here and now, in his time of need. But, of course, nothing came. Instead, he was left with a great and cloying nothingness that ripped him into pieces and threatened to swallow him up at any moment.

_Why?_

The wound in his chest ached in recompense for his temerity. It ached with a pain that had nothing to do with his wound, nor his victory. His very being ached; his soul crying out against the great and hollow void that had opened up within his heart. He missed them. He missed her. He missed all of them, the family he'd known, the family he'd long since lost, and the family he'd come to know in this world. And now he'd lost all of them, too.

_WHY?_

Why did it have to come to all this? Why was it now, at his moment of triumph that he had no one to share it with? Nothing, no one, nothing at all to live for? The thought brought a fresh pang of agony to his heart. He had defeated the master. Now, all that remained, was the apprentice. He too, would have to be dealt with, regardless of the consequence, and of the wound left to him by Sidious.

Now was not the time to grieve. There would plenty of time for that later. Though his chest threatened to burst and his left arm had long since gone numb, he, the boy who'd refused to die on that fateful day, smiled. She'd be proud of him, he supposed. They all would. He ticked off their names in his mind, counting the many hilts at his belt, each battered blade serving as a constant reminder, as a sigil for those he had lost.

"Obi-wan," He muttered the jedi master's name bitterly. "Why? Why did we let you talk us into this...

_Ding._

Ignore it, he told himself. He was sulking.

_Ding._

Don't answer, he groused. He was busy cursing Obi-Wan.

_Ding!_

Son of a sithspawn!

The comlink at his belt chimed incessantly. Softly at first, then a steady bleat that only grew louder with time. The young jedi wanted nothing more than to ignore it, but the constant prickling at the base of his neck refused leave him be. Eventually, he complied. Shamefaced, he cringed as he considered the rammification, not of assasinating the supreme chancellor, but of what the voice on the other end might make of his refusal to answer.

What he'd done just now hadn't exactly been sanctioned by the council_-what was left of it-_after all.

Taking a deep breath, steeling himself for the worst, he activated the master switch on the side of the otherwise featureless apparatus. A single, solitary light flared across the screen for a moment, sputtered and died. Naruto slammed it into the bulkhead. The green light flickered for a moment longer, then maintained steady signal strength. Naruto whacked it across the top of the spire for a second time, just to be sure.

"You needn't consider yourself with Sidious, my master." Were his first words upon activating the disposable device. "He's likely bleeding out below me even as we speak." All that followed was a long moment of silence. Naruto watched, and Naruto waited. Patience had never been one of his strong points_-and it still wasn't-_but after spending nearly a decade in this strange dimension, he had grasped some measure of it. The old Naruto would have been astounded by what he'd become. Kind, mature, loving, caring, even, and nowhere near as dense as he'd once been.

Pity, none of that mattered now.

A squeal of static grated across his ears, then nothing.

"Well, have you done," At last, a war-weary voice chirped on the other end of the receiver. "My apprentice. Proud of you, would she have been."

"Yes, master Yoda." Naruto felt his hoarse voice, and he knew he sounded weak, but somehow, he couldn't bring himself to deny the subtle praise that had been heaped upon him just now. Yes, she would have been proud. All of them would have been. Silently he brushed each of the ten hilts that adjourned his belt, and permitted himself a moment to mourn for what he had lost, and to accept what he still had.

Then it was back to business.

"Master, is she-

Another shriek, this one not sounding at all like static.

"Too soon to tell, it is." Came the almost immediate yet hesitant answer, and there was a pained scream that sounded partially outraged in the background. "Hopeful, we are." A note of uncertainty entered his voice as somewhere in the background, a woman spat multiple obscenities,

Naruto nodded, chuckling ruefully.

"That sounds...encouraging, master."

"Then I shall remain here and tie up loose ends." Before the voice could protest, he crushed the comlink within his fist and cast it down to the depths below. Resigning himself to his fate, Naruto folded his legs, sat down, and went deep, deep into his thoughts, thoughts of a more peaceful, hectic time, when it was all so much more simple. So sadly, ridicously simple, that he almost longed for the ignorance of those days.

Compared to this day, as he waited for death to greet in the form of Darth Vader, it was painfully obvious how much he missed those days.

It felt like only yesterday, but in reality, it was years ago...

**A/N: Flashback next chappy! Also, I will say nothing more about Hinata's status! Hehehe! He has ten hilts on his belt and their are lesse, how many rookies of Konoha (12, including himself). So, You will have to guess if she is alive currently, or dead or currently in the middle of la..you know! ALSO this fic is for those who like both Naruto and Star Wars. I apologize if anyone is offended, but if you don't like, don't read as I have made extensive edits for this very reason! Also...**

**Review please until I die from overexposure! Although, being a skeleton...I AM ALREADY DEAD! SKULL JOOOOOOKE! YOHOHOHO! (One Piece humor Don't know, don't ask!)**


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